MARIA PEDRO

Her father was a pimp and her mother was a prostitute. Aged 18 months old, she was abandoned and raised in care. Education was her way out and she went on to manage a supermodel, Michelin-starred chefs, Peter Gabriel and become the most influential woman in English rugby. ‘Remarkable’ doesn’t begin to do justice to the story of Maria Pedro.

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Top right: Meeting and greeting Prince Charles in her role as Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Hounslow; Phil and Maria with the Trophy in 2003: Phil with just after had won the World Cup in : Maria and Phil join Michelin-starred chef Michael Caines to promote his hotel and restaurant at Lympstone Manor in Exeter; Outside Marylebone Registry Office on their wedding day in September 2018

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Right: England celebrate their victory in Sydney. Below right: Phil Vickery and Steve Thompson celebrate victory with Phil Keith-Roach after the International match between Argentina and England on June 22, 2002 at the Velez Sarsfield Stadium, in .

September the 10th, 2018, Marylebone Registry Office. A humble enough “I would do coaching and video sessions about the opposition, which hadn’t location for a wedding, but with a guest list that includes former England players been done before,” he explains. “They seemed to quite like it and kept asking me , Phil Vickery, and , Sir Clive back. I was thrilled, honoured, delighted. But I was also a bit scared to ask the Woodward, Peter Gabriel, Michelin-starred chef Michael Caines and living legend management about getting paid. of children’s TV, Baroness Floella Benjamin. Taking the pictures, Dave Rogers, a “So I spoke to Dick, who had been England’s head coach in 1983. He said ‘well, photographer who has spent 40 years capturing some of rugby’s most iconic you’ve got to meet Maria Pedro. She’s the number one rugby agent. She’s the only moments. proper agent. She’s extraordinary!’ Phil Keith-Roach and Maria Pedro had been ‘going steady’ for 21 years - he was “I remember every detail of that day. I went downstairs and was greeted by 75 and she was 64 – but the wedding had been hastily arranged. Maria’s radiant smile. We talked for an hour. I found her intriguing.” A few weeks earlier, Maria had surgery to remove a tumour in her a frontal lobe, They met again later that evening at a gathering arranged by Greenwood at while Phil was having treatment for cancer having originally been told the previous The Sporting Page pub in Chelsea. year that he might have only six months to live. “We all went out for dinner that evening,” recalls Phil. “But then people As they drove back home following her operation, he saw a couple walking started to drift off. I lived across the road and we were the last two there. That day down the steps outside the registry office, turned to Maria and said, ‘we’re getting changed my life. married in there’. “I must have been captivated immediately because my youngest daughter “We could have spent years preparing that wedding and would not have tells me I rang her within two days!” bettered it,” says the former Rosslyn Park hooker who became England’s first Buoyed by his new-found romance, Phil went in to see the RFU and they agreed professional scrum coach. to give him a cheque for a couple of grand. It was only after Sir “I think she wanted to get married quite quickly after we first met,” he admits. became coach in September 1997 that he was handed a formal contract. “It’s been a bit harrowing sometimes, thinking about how long I left it. “I spent eleven years with England Rugby but I couldn’t have done it without Maria. “I’m just thankful we had the chance at the end. When she was ill, I just knew. I We would watch a game on Friday evening and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. was desperate to be married to her, absolutely desperate. It suddenly came to me “Then we would get back home, she would type up my match reports and ‘why haven’t I? Why have I denied her?’ I would send them to Clive Woodward along with all the other coaches.” “Peter Gabriel later came to my house and gave me a memory stick. At first, I At the point when Woodward started his reign as coach, Pedro was the didn’t know what was on it, but he had filmed the exact moment when we became most influential woman in English rugby. Nowadays, she would probably be husband and wife. described as a ‘super agent’. At one point she was representing most of the “That film has left a mark on me in my ways. I must not let grief warp the England XV including Jeremy Guscott, , , Kyran memory that we were in total unison at that moment.” Bracken and - players who all went on enjoy successful careers Just a few days after becoming Mrs Keith-Roach, an MRI scan revealed that outside of the sport. Pedro had cancer, which was advanced to a stage where it was beyond treatment. That was a remarkable achievement in itself. Even now, only one woman She passed away on November 4, 2018. features on England Rugby’s list of approved agents. But her ascension was all the more improbable given the circumstances by which Maria came into this world. Phil and Maria first met in the Mayfair office of former England flanker, turned coach, turned entrepreneur and man about town, . The Born on May 22, 1952, in North-West , Maria never met her father, purpose of the meeting was to sort out Keith-Roach’s situation with England Rugby. who she later discovered was a pimp and died before she was born after being After he stopped playing for Rosslyn Park, Keith-Roach taught economics at fatally stabbed in a brawl. Her mother was a prostitute and abandoned Maria when Dulwich College. But he was also coaching and had a sideline with a new company she was just eighteen months old. called Rhino that was developing a scrum machine known as The Powerhouse. Some forty years later, Maria hired a private investigator who tracked down her Ahead of Australia’s 1984 tour of the UK and Ireland, Wallabies coach Alan family to a council house in Slough. It turned out to be a cathartic moment but not Jones contacted Keith-Roach to help with the scrum and lineouts, but also to use in the way that Pedro would have imagined. Her white mother wanted nothing to The Powerhouse. The Wallabies won all four test matches against England, do with a mixed-race daughter. Ireland, Scotland and Wales with an aggregate points margin of 110-33. Pedro later said, “In retrospect it was a really liberating experience. I could Yet it would be another eleven years before Keith-Roach was asked to join the imagine how I would be and what I would be doing if I’d stayed with her — a England senior set up. miserable existence.”

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Right: Phil Keith-Roach (middle) with former England internationals and Jason Leonard Below Right: The happy couple with Baroness Floella Benjamin

She spent most her of childhood within the state care system but education She added, “I can’t do anything for them if they don’t perform well on the field. provided a pathway to a better life. Some people rushed off into promoting themselves as celebrities and forgot the After passing the 11-plus, she got into a grammar school, but it was in Ashford, playing side. To their cost. Whoever said it’s not about winning but taking part was Kent, which involved a four-hour round trip every weekday. Eventually, Brent talking nonsense.” Council’s social services secured Pedro a place at St Catherine’s – a boarding Guscott soon became an ubiquitous figure, starring in TV shows, writing school near Guildford. She became best friends with Jill Moore, whose father was newspaper columns, and modelling for catalogues. He was the rugby celebrity Peter Moore aka Baron Moore of Wolvercote. His sole England came against who was adored by your sister, your mother and your grandmother. But he also Wales in the 1951 Five Nations, but he was far better known as the Private Secretary had a stellar career on the pitch. to the Queen. “As I recall it, she went to the and saw Jerry play,” says Phil. The Moores would become the closest thing Pedro ever had to a surrogate “She once said to me, ‘if he was running across snow he wouldn’t leave a footprint.’ family and she would become a frequent guest at Kensington Palace, mixing with He also sent me texts after Maria died saying she had a profound effect on his life high society; a world away from the life that she had known just a few years earlier. and he knew she had a profound effect on mine. After graduating from the London School of Economics, she trained as a social “When we started going out together he said to Maria, ‘isn’t he a bit old for worker before moving into finance as a merchant banker. you?’, which is the cue for a roar of laughter. Meanwhile, Jill Moore would go on to marry Peter Gabriel. In 1987, he became a “A lot of the other guys at Bath wanted her to be their manager. She saw Gareth global star through the success of So, an album that sold over ten million copies. Chilcott play and thought ‘he would be ideal for panto’. He then worked every Gabriel wanted somebody he could trust to handle his financial affairs and didn’t Christmas for fifteen years.” want to sign to a big agency. At first, Pedro resisted the idea but eventually relented. It requires a certain force of personality to be a successful agent. But as a Talk about going in at the deep end. She had to steer a path through managing woman of colour in the male-dominated world of rugby, it also required an awful her best friend’s husband at the point when their marriage was breaking down. lot of resolve and resilience. But Maria was better equipped than most to deal with But Pedro made an effortless transition from the financial world to the world of it given the challenges she had overcome to get this far. “She worked with celebrity. Soon her roster of clients would include supermodel Marie Helvin and Richmond just at the point when big money came into the club,” explains Phil. chef Raymond Blanc. She was ahead of the game when it came to understanding a “She also got on very well with at Wasps and Dean Richards at star’s marketability. In an interview with Business Age magazine, she said, “I see Leicester. But I can’t say that was the case with every Director of Rugby. Some had them as brands and I won’t take people on unless I think I can either develop them delusions of grandeur, were full of themselves, looked down on a woman, but also as a brand or if there’s still some mileage in that brand.” looked down on a black woman. “She was a networker long before the word was popularised,” adds Phil. “She “I remember her coming out of one meeting with a few tears. It was the worst was approached by Blanc and did a lot of his deals for TV and supermarkets.” of the class system, the pomposity and self-regard. The sort of people you and I At the time, Maria’s offices were just outside of Bath and Phil recalls that “she would think were complete prats. And rather than having a charming way with a was invited to a lawyers and accountants luncheon where she met former Bath woman, they would be thinking ‘what are you doing here?’ fly-half, Brendan Perry. He said, ‘I know Jerry (Guscott) is wondering if there is any “To give you another example of what she came up against, I’d only just met scope for him in the commercial world’. This was still five or six years before the her in early 1997 and she was off to see Guscott play for the Lions in South Africa. game turned professional.” “She made appointments with some of the rugby hierarchy over there and they had arranged for her to be picked up at the airport. She went to the agreed meeting As unlikely as it sounds now, Guscott could sometimes be found on a building spot and she was the only person there for 45 minutes. She called the chap who site working as a bricklayer or driving a bus when he wasn’t playing for Bath. was due to pick her up, who said ‘no, I’ve driven past there three times and you The men looking to represent England stars like Guscott tended to fit the weren’t there.’ classic mould of the wide-boy, 90s sports agent – all flash motors and mobile “The reason he thought she wasn’t there was because of the colour of her skin. phones the size of a brick. That’s the world she had lived in then and people still have to live in now” By contrast, he described Maria as “a different act altogether…my contract with her consisted of a handshake.” When it came to managing rugby players, Maria said that being a In an interview with from 1996, Maria warned that as the game woman meant you stood out from the crowd, “You come up against barriers but entered the professional era so the profile of players would rise and their lives you do in any walk of life. But it can work to your advantage. You get attention would come under increased scrutiny like never before. because you are not just another man in a suit. It works both ways.”

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However, what persuaded her to walk away from the sport had nothing to do Fraser brought together a team of young local filmmakers to “expose them to with prejudice but came down to a simple matter of principle. opportunities they might not otherwise get. “I was also coaching at Wasps at the time and I was approached by several “We wanted to hold a launch event and we were hoping to use the Sipsmith’s players for her to represent them. She got a great new deal Gin Distillery in Hounslow, because she helped them to win a Queen’s Award. But (thought to be around £150,000 a year). He said ‘yes’ but then went two weeks then, of course, lockdown happened. without returning her calls. He was away with Ireland in , so she called him “So we decided to hold the premiere on a private YouTube channel. We did and said, ‘I need to know whether you’re definitely going to sign this’. Henderson three screenings on Friday, May 21, the date of Maria’s birthday. It was a mixture of replied, ‘Yes, and I’ll be back on Monday. I’ll speak to you then.’ the local community, Maria and Phil’s friends, which included Jill Gabriel, Danny “By Monday the newspapers reported that he had signed for Munster. She Grewcock, Wayne Barnes and Martin Bashir, and other connections from around came home and said, ‘that’s it, honey, it’s time to look elsewhere. There are too the world. Bashir was incredibly complimentary about the film and that was a many people whispering in these guys’ ears’. huge boost for everyone involved.” “It was a terrible blow. The shake of a hand, the honour of one’s word was Bashir conducted a string of famous TV interviews including one with Princess broken. I thought Rob was a friend but he never spoke to her again.” Diana in 1995 followed by Michael Jackson in 2003. He was also a decent rugby Instead, she was able to use her connections to campaign against child abuse player in his youth and represented London Welsh Juniors. through her next role as celebrity manager for the NSPCC, which became the A few years ago, Bashir was on a tube train heading back to central London official charity of the England Rugby team. from Twickenham. The only other chap sitting near him in his carriage was She was instrumental in bringing on board a string of famous ‘ambassadors’, Keith-Roach, who didn’t recognise him but spotted that Bashir was holding a and by the end of her seven years at the NSPCC its annual income had increased matchday programme. from £20m to £120m. “So, he’s thumbing through the programme and we get chatting,” recalls The last entries on her CV were Deputy Lieutenant to the Lord Lieutenant of Phil. “I ask if he used to play? He says, ‘yeah, when I was younger I played Greater London, before subsequently becoming Representative Deputy at hooker. Lieutenant for Hounslow - a role which she described as a ‘bridge builder’. “My sports master was keen for us to see rugby played at a first-class level. So he would take us to Rosslyn Park and they were one the best teams in Along with hosting members of the Royal family, dignitaries and other the country. VIPs at public events across the borough, Maria could draw on her life experiences “They had this amazing hooker called Philip Keith-Roach. He used to win to provide advice and help to publicise community programmes, youth nearly every ball in the scrum. He would also find Andy Ripley at the back of the organisations, charities and local businesses to a wider audience. Freed from having line-out with pinpoint accuracy. to negotiate contracts, it turned out to be the most enjoyable period of her career. “At first I’m thinking, ‘he must be taking the micky’. But I don’t want to spoil the It was through this work that she met Alan Fraser, assistant headteacher at story, so I let him carry on. I was getting near to my stop, so I take my hat off and Cranford College and Chair of Heston West Big Local - a lottery-funded group say, ‘you probably won’t remember me.” where residents are given £1 million and the power to invest that money however He says, ‘No’. those choose to create opportunities and improve their communities. ‘Well, I’m Phil Keith-Roach. “I had no idea of her background and it says something about her that I didn’t “From that moment we’ve been friends and Martin helped me out with getting know,” says Fraser. food during lockdown.” “In fact, nobody in Hounslow knew much about Maria, and I think that was Shortly after Pedro’s funeral, Phil received an email from Floella Benjamin. because she didn’t want to become the story. She wanted to focus on other “She asked me ‘what are you going to do about Maria’s legacy?’ Well, I didn’t people’s achievements and perhaps felt that she would detract from what she was have a clue.” trying to achieve.” Maria’s Story is a fitting tribute in itself, particularly as she would have Fraser had the idea to make a documentary about Maria’s life, titled Maria’s championed a project that gives young adults a platform to showcase their skills. Story, after he attended her funeral. But Fraser and Keith-Roach are also currently setting up a scholarship scheme “Floella Benjamin was reading Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech, for children in care when they leave school or go to University. Michael Caines was there, Lawrence Dallaglio was there, Sir Clive Woodward was “After she died I was full of remorse, but also pride in what she achieved,” says there... I started to think ‘this was an incredible life, an inspirational story and Phil. “She was a gift from God.”

needs to be heard’.” Story by Ryan Herman Images and Phil Keith-Roach Getty Pictures:

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